


Different; not the same

by thepalebluedot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The First Avenger, Gen, the Howling Commandos, this is mostly just meta tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:12:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3977572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepalebluedot/pseuds/thepalebluedot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one makes it out of a war unchanged.</p><p>There is blood on his hands, on all of their hands. It's not about winning, not anymore, not when the air tastes of smoke and blood and he's shoving another set of scorched dog tags into his pocket. There's a distant dream of a better world and a lesson learned, but it's more about just ending it, making it home somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Different; not the same

**Author's Note:**

> so, this is 50% fic and 50% me rambling, and because its half rambling it's only been beta'd by me, so please tell me if you find a mistake that I missed
> 
> I also don't really have an explanation for the title because its only 900-some words and meta-y so yep it's just that

Steve does the USO tour. Of course he does. He was given two choices: be a showgirl, or be a lab rat, and fake punching a fake Hitler seemed like it would at least be more entertaining than being poked at and stuck with needles.

Doesn’t mean he’s eager to do it. Doesn’t mean he’s good at it, either.

What it does mean is this: he has to learn. He has to learn to be good at it, has to learn to like it, has to learn how the whole thing works. And he does.

Being a showgirl means faking a smile, means faking a happy face and faking excitement and faking everything, it means pretending you want to be there when in reality it’s the last place you thought you’d end up.

But it helps, they tell him. He’s doing his part. And so he fakes it, loses a bit of himself maybe, learns how to live life able to breathe, but he still has all of his morals and his noble world view and is still dying to get to the front lines, dying to be useful. He gets there, and he’s still just a showgirl, still wearing tights, but then Bucky’s gone, missing, _not_ dead, he _can’t be dead, he isn’t dead_ ¸ and then suddenly he’s not useless anymore. He’s fighting. He’s got a unit, a team, he’s fighting the war, the good fight. He’s where he’s always wanted to be. But the Commandos are a specialized unit when it comes to missions. And for the most part, it’s just them, their combined skills are what’s needed to get shit done. Sometimes though, it’s just one of them. It’s just Dernier or Gabe or Falsworth, sometimes just Bucky, and sometimes it’s a whole bunch of them, the Commandos thrown into a bigger unit because they need to be doing something useful at all times, apparently.

And it’s okay. It’s not great, how could it be? Its war. He has the shield, but more often than not he uses a gun, and it bothers him at first, until one day, it doesn’t. His shield is strapped to his back, it has been for hours, but his gun hasn’t left his hands. They’re all running low on bullets, and there’s blood on his hands and dirt under his nails.

They go out with a hundred or so men and hit a minefield. The first line of men are gone, just like that. Gone in a flurry of fire and torn up earth, blood and everything else spattered on trees. Gone. Just like that. It’s awful, and isn’t that the understatement of the century, limbs torn off and chunks of flesh just gone, and Steve sees some of the men picking up dog tags, but no one picking up bodies.

“It’s not fair,” he says later. “It’s not right, to leave them there like that, I know we couldn’t have taken them with us but it doesn’t feel right.” Bucky looks at him and thinks of all the men gunned down right in front of him, right next to him, thinks of nights in foxholes and the rest of his unit, all gone, so many dead, so much blood on his clothes and in the treads of his boots.

“It’s a war, Stevie,” he says, and he keeps his voice blank and grim because if he thinks about the grief and the loss of his men and the loss of himself, he won’t be able to wake up in the mornings. “It’s war, it’s how it is.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

There’s a long moment of silence, where Steve thinks of the childish, honorable dream he lost somewhere on the way back from Austria, and Bucky thinks of too-thin limbs and blue eyes and all the things he never wanted to see, all the things he never wanted to do but did anyway, because he had to, because he put his life above the life of some anonymous German who probably believed he was fighting for what’s right.

He doesn’t know what right is anymore, but he knows that this isn’t it.

 _No one likes it_ , he thinks. _No one sane likes it_. Out loud, he says quietly, “Means you’ll have to get used to it,” and in his lungs there is tobacco and gun smoke, and in his eyes there is ice cold steel, polished by loss and the primal instinct to survive.

And they go on more missions, and more men die, good men. Men die in front of him and in the arms of other soldiers and in the medic tent. There’s grim reports and letters of condolences and dog tags sent home instead of bodies, and Steve has put bullets in heads and chests and destroyed tanks with soldiers in them and blown up entire facilities still full of men. He’s let it all happen, he’s made it all happen.

Bucky falls, and as he falls he thinks of the icy death waiting below him, he thinks of golden hair and what he couldn’t save, he thinks of his loyalty that wasn’t for his country, never for his country, but for his best friend, for his team, for-

There is ice in Steve’s eyes, frosted steel, and he is unstoppable. Dum Dum calls him star-spangled hell as they walk with their backs to another warehouse that’s been reduced to nothing but rubble, and when he laughs, it’s a sharp, bitter sound. If he’s hell, then there is no pitchfork, no flames, just a red white and blue blur of a target. Just ice, a heart made cold by loss, arteries pumping grey slush from the side of the road in winter in Brooklyn. Just one last thing left, just bombs and crimson and glowing blue and frozen ocean.

When he puts the plane into a nosedive, it’s almost a relief.

When the plane hits the water, he doesn’t feel the cold.

 


End file.
